Friday, 3 July 2015

Biased interviewing from Jeremy Vine



Maybe I ought to start monitoring Jeremy Vine's programme on BBC Radio 2, because this lunchtime's edition began with one of the most biased pieces of BBC broadcasting I've heard in a long time.

I was going to transcribe the biased section, to show you it in all its horror, but that would take far too long and I'm off out soon. So please listen for yourselves. It's near the start of the show (beginning at 6:53).

The question was: Should the UK bomb IS in Syria?

There were two interviews. The first was with the SNP's Alex Salmond (against UK strikes on Syria), the second with Colonel Richard Kemp (for UK strikes on Syria). 

They could not have been handled more differently. 

Mr Salmond wasn't interrupted and was treated with good-natured respect by Jeremy Vine. 

Colonel Kemp, in contrast, was relentlessly interrupted and contradicted, sometimes with a disrespectful laughing tone. 

Jeremy Vine got far too emotionally involved here, frequently raising his voice against Colonel Kemp. 

And he did that thing that no professional BBC interviewer should do (in my opinion) - ending the interview by firmly contradicting his interviewee and then bringing the interview to a close, not allowing his guest (Richard Kemp) to reply. 

He even cited Russell Brand's denunciation of Western foreign policy for ultimately causing the terrorist attack in Tunisia at him.

Dreadful interviewing.

"This is a peace-loving kind of song", said Jeremy soon after, introducing Robert Palmer's Every Kind of People